ZP Fish Poems

13 FISH POEMS

-saiom shriver-

HOW TO SERVE A SUFFOCATED FISH

First cut off his fin It’s his steering wheel Then chop off his lungs He can’t breathe without his gills. Then gouge out his eyes for he no longer needs to see And scrape off those inedible diamonds .. his diving suit scales. Tattletell of the size of his tail.. and how you left in the water a wake of bloody trail.

De-gut him, deluded into thinking..his guts are more putrefied than the rest of his flesh. Then grill his gills and fry his eyes and bake his mad fish muscles and maybe wish on his bones.

How to serve a fish: cast your bread upon the waters in which he freely swims.

(to M Haldane and her work to protect

all species)

BUSTER CRAB

Buster Crab was a fisherman named after Buster Crab. He was a crab buster .. but in the long run the crab was the buster …is it awful that he eats offal .. causing hepatitis ..and meningitis?

DO FISH FEEL PAIN

Do fish feel pain? Do they suffer? feel agony when human others do them smother? the terror in their eyes .. the gasping for breath in the boat .. the fighting against the hook which is caught in gills or throat or eyes.. are these signs of distress? Are they children of the same Father Mother? our sisters and our brothers? Are we recipients of stolen goods when their dead bodies are on our plates? By God given feelings.. yet like stroke victims they cannot scream.

NO PAIN CROSS

Casting bread upon the waters of the sea.. the biggest aquarium.. the one with the most room.. like snow it sifts gently down .. vertical axes .. intersecting the horizontal axes of fish moving to and fro.. .. no collision .. no nails .. no pain

EPIPHANY

He decided no longer to bury the parts of other animals in his stomach.

FISH WEEPS

How can one tell if a fish weeps when he’s immersed in the briny deeps? He weeps for those caught in the nets .. he’ll destroy those nets before sunset

ANGLERS

The art of asphyxiation The science of suffocation Have they thought, the anglers as of trapping lines they are danglers as of turtles and otters and gills they are manglers about being thought of as occupational stranglers?

ICHTHYOLOGIST AND ANGLER

He was an ichthyologist and also an angler. He studied fish in order more efficiently to murder them and devour them. But some day he would suddenly realize he loved them… and then he would change.

SUFFER NO SUFFOCATION 3

Creatures they rip from seashallows for the divine nature in fishes they do not hallow .. as they piscean dismembered parts swallow .. the human body becomes a gallows

(books of Leonard Horowitz document the role Nobel winner Gallo played with Merck and the DOD in spreading AIDS throughout Africa and the USA;… whether or not he and Kissinger should retain the Nobel is open to question)

(fish cannot scream.. a poster created by a British animal rights activist)

FISH CAN’T SCREAM

Fish are loved for their silence… even when agonizing on the hook

Birds are loved for their joyful unintrusive choirs

LOBSTERS

Lobsters raise their claws in supplication.. asking not for boiling alive nor for suffocation.

FISHEYE POINT OF VIEW

to the fishes men are anglers stranglers asphyxiaters suffocaters robbing innocents of the air of life

can we see the agony in their eyes as they gasp for breath

FISH STORIES

1 A man took his daughters fishing in Tampico Bay in Mexico.. and was spiked by a large catfish who severed his hand artery. His life was saved as he was able to get medical attention for the profuse bleeding. 2 . Janet B an editor at a NY publishing house goes fishing and catches a hook in the fish’ eye. She never fishes again. 3 . PW, at the Soldier and Sailors’ Home in Washington, catches the same fish out of the pond virtually every day for 10 years.. each time pulling the hook from the throat.. sometimes with flesh attached. PW died of throat cancer. (The child of a wellknown presidential candidate went to a hospital to be treated for his flyfishing hook which was imbedded in his nose.) 4. St. Blaze is considered by Catholics the patron saint of protection from fishbyproducts since he is said to protect the lives of those choking on fish bones. 5. One national cancer association reports that fish consumption is related to stomach cancer.. those countries with the highest fish consumption having the highest rates. Included are Korea, Japan, Norway, Chile etc. 6. The EPA issues 3500 warnings against fish consumption in one year alone.. because of high levels of pcb’s (polychlorinated biphenols), arsenic, chromium, mercury and dozens of other toxic metals etc. 7. One fisherman reports that after seeing the fishes gasp for air in the bottom of his boat.. as they slowly suffocate.. he will never fish again. 8. Syndee Brinkman: I went snorkeling and saw how gently the fish welcomed us into their world.. and how violently we welcomed them into ours.. I never ate an animal or fish again. 9. EB was a fisherman all his life and lived into his mid nineties. He stopped fishing after he dreamt one night that he was tiny and a fish was very large. The fish had him on a hook. The sale of fish brings 54 million to the state of Maryland, whose governor has just prevailed on 3 chains in the Washington area to begin again to sell Chesapeake fish despite the pfiesteria disease. One factor of many in the disease of the fish might be the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, which raises the temperature of the water in the area. 10. NPR caller, Oct 27, 97: My mother never got to see the same military MD twice, so it was years before medical detectives realized that her Saturday headaches were caused by her Friday fisheating with an allergy to iodine. 11 NPR November 6, 1997: Dr. James Porter of the Univ. of Athens at Georgia is studying the many new fishes diseases such as black band and white pox. He says that increased shipping, increased pollution, and overfishing (perhaps an oxymoron) are factors for the rise. In one year, says the EPA, the coral diseases have quadrupled. Snorkelers are advised that coral is not a dead rock but a colony of living animals and therefore asked not to remove them. 12 . U.S. News and World Report Nov 24, 1997: One of the strains causing food poisoning in shellfish is Vibria Vulnificus. 13. The phrase ‘fresh fish’ is an oxymoron. The corpus has become a corpse. 14. Prince Philip is one of many in a coalition concerned about fisheries exhaustion. A network news show in May reported that many penguin babies are expected to die because there are not enough fishes for them to eat. 15. There have been many fraternity house deaths from choking in an attempt to swallow live goldfish and other fish. (May God bless those souls.) 16. Many fishermen and women have drowned, e.g. Jerry Garcia’s father. It is the most dangerous of all occupations. 17. 150,000 turtles drown every year in shrimp nets, says Eric Bates of the Texas Observer (For the article write Manny Pastreich mpastreich@c…) There are also over 100,000 dolphins caught in tuna fish and other nets, and many whales are caught in lobster lines. Lisa Simpson of the Simpsons rescued a fish caught in a 6 pack plastic holder and threw him back into the water. 18. While the UNFAO The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says the oceans are dying and there are not enough fishes for those who want to eat them, the Dept. of Interior in July sponsored a week of fishing. http://www.fao.org 19. The Texas Dept. of Health states that 245 people have been victims of illness from oysters in Galveston Bay. The bacterium is Vibrio parahaemolyticus. 208 people have had oyster illness in the Northwest. 20 The Oklahoma Dept. of Env. Quality has asked pregnant women to avoid catfish in certain parts of Oklahoma because of high insecticide content in the waters and in the fishes. (JanaWilson@aol.com…) 21. With asbestos in Lake Michigan, pcb’s in the livers of polar bears in Alaska, oyster contamination in the Gulf from the runoff of the Mississippi, lipophilic insecticides in Lake Erie, pfiesteria in the Atlantic seaboard ..arsenic, chromium and mercury, pcb’s, insecticides, fish killing old oil and every other toxin in the oceans, shellfish in the NE eating unprocessed human waste, where is there fresh fish? Farmed salmon in the NW, says an NPR guest on Feb 24th, can be released into the wild exploding new bacteriae into the ocean. v. Arsenic poisoning (arsenic from the oceans is concentrated in the flesh of fishes) creates lesions and warts on the hands. NPR reported on Dec 29, 1998 that many million in Bangladesh are dying of arsenic poisoning from its concentration in well water, and in water of the delta. w. Dr. Owen Parrett, MD has spoken of the worms present in Rocky Mtn. trout. In Dec of 98, AP reported on a parasite worm affecting many trout in Colorado, Idaho, Montana etc. The parasite causes the fishes to turn in circles until they die. x. Government recalls in Jan 99 18,000 lbs of Hansung salted yellow croaker because of fear of deadly botulism. y. An El Cajon California man reports that lightning struck the metal poles (hooks and wires also?) of his group’s lightning rod fishing poles. They abandoned their fishing that day. Campaign For the Abolition of Angling pisces@p… is an international organization working to end the cruelty of fish suffocation and fish throat ripping. z. A young girl goes fishing in a lake.. and pulls her fish in quickly.. he hangs choking from a tree branch. z1 A shrimp man has a captive shrimp caught in the hair of his armpit. August 29, 2000: NPR focused on melanoma. One of the doctor hosts mentioned that Japanese have higher esophageal melanoma incidence. Japan is among the top 5 in fish consumption. J Marcus: As they say, I don’t eat anything with a face. That includes fish. is meat. That includes fish. z2 Because factory farmed fish are given bone meal from other animals, the incidence of Mad Fish is on the rise. z3 Fish are becoming female or sterilized from the trillions of gallons of urine from cows and pigs and chickens given female hormones.. urine whose hormones remain in the waters. z4 Why are shellfish not kosher? Because they are coprophagous or wasteeating and process the human waste coming from Atlantic seaboard cities.. Shellfish are the number two cause of hepatitis.